Eat the Damn Chocolate

Your body size shouldn’t determine what you do — or what you eat.

By
Virgie Tovar

Feb 14, 2018

Getty Images

When you’re a fat woman, Valentine’s Day can feel… complicated.

This is, in part, because of what we’ve been taught from a young age: that boys don’t like fat girls, and that fat women are less worthy of love and affection and romance. As a chubby little nerdy girl, strategically planning which member of New Kids on the Block was likeliest to give me my first kiss (should the opportunity arise), I quickly learned to believe that dating and romance were reserved for the petite — and that I should hold off on dreaming of love until I’d done my time on the treadmill. And this continued well into adulthood: I did not see a fat woman portrayed as the (un-ironic) object of desire in a film until I was 30.

While things have gotten better in recent years, fat women are still rarely portrayed in a romantic light in film and books and on TV. But a lack of romantic representation isn’t the only thing about Valentine’s Day that has, historically, set my teeth on edge.

While many people don’t realize it, Valentine’s Day is a food holiday. Success is measured by how competitive your dinner reservation is, and whether or not you consume a fine dessert comprised primarily of heavy whipping cream. As children, we’re encouraged to pass out candy to one another like it’s Halloween. One of the most iconic symbols of Valentine’s Day is the coveted satin-lined box of chocolates.

But while delicate truffles and creamy mousse might sound dreamy, the reality is that a fat woman — and, let's be honest, most any woman — could easily receive a public flouting if she were caught actually enjoying the treats she’d been gifted.

So, I have to ask: Where do fat women fit in the story of Valentine’s Day?

The history of how we view delicious foods (like chocolate) parallels the history of extreme body expectations in curious ways. Perhaps most notably is the association of rich, stimulating food with sin, found in terms like "devil’s food cake." The entry of the Lord of Darkness into culinary vernacular dates back to the 18th century. The word "deviled" was used to indicate food that had spice, and was thought to excite the senses (including the downstairs ones). The dietary reform movement of the mid-1800s, led by Reverend Sylvester Graham (the man who invented graham crackers), advocated for the removal of food with sugar or spice from the diet in order to control sexual impulses. Graham’s movement was one of the first in the United States to assert a relationship between food and morality. This movement was in many ways the precursor to modern-day attitudes toward fatness. In particular, the idea that fatness represents over-indulgence and carries the punishment of social stigma due to a perception of perilous moral latitude. The tie between food and morality lives on to this day, evidenced in descriptions like "sinfully delicious."

This has wide-reaching effects: I remember the days when the idea of eating chocolate made me break out in a cold sweat. I used to avoid entire aisles of the grocery store, like I was navigating a cold war between me and anything with sugar, butter, flour, and all the other ingredients that make food good.

The problem was, no matter how hard I tried or how little I ate, I never got small enough. It felt like each time I closed my eyes to wipe the righteous sweat of self-discipline off my face, the goal post had moved and I was further away from my desires than ever.

While in diet mode, dessert became the enemy. Chocolate — to me — was a gateway to my unraveling. Like many dieters, I would have irrational nightmares about eating one tiny nibble, losing my damn mind and then waking up from a frenzy, having eaten everything in my refrigerator as well as my best friend and her husband.

I was afraid of food. I was afraid of hunger. These two integral elements have been part of human life for as long as we’ve existed on this planet. And there I was trying to fight my lizard brain’s instinct to keep me alive so that I could fit into something from Ann Taylor.

And then something truly miraculous happened: I started dating someone who told me that I was the perfect size. He encouraged me to recognize that no one got to tell me what size my body "had" to be — not Ann Taylor, not a movie, and not a man. And after all those years of denying myself, he gave me an incredible gift: He encouraged me to eat exactly what I wanted. Of course, I shouldn’t have had to wait to get this from a romantic relationship in adulthood. It was already my right to enjoy food without shame or the fear of losing access to love or respect — just like it should be the right of every human.

It's been almost 10 years since I stopped trying to control my weight. Nowadays, I don’t think twice about eating the things that scared me all those years ago. I realize now that I was dieting because I thought something was wrong with me — when in fact, there’s something wrong with a culture that expects everybody to dedicate significant parts of their lives to becoming a size zero.

I’m here to say that body diversity is a real thing, and your body size shouldn’t determine what you do — or what you eat.

So to return to the question at hand: Where do fat women belong in the story of Valentine’s Day? I say we belong on every page. It's time to write our own stories — ones where we emerge from the shadows with our chocolate truffles held high. We have nothing to lose but our shame, and not just on Valentine’s Day, but every day. It’s time to claim our rightful place, front and center — devil be damned.

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